The Department of Anthropology began at the University of New Mexico in 1928, with summer archaeological field schools at Jemez Pueblo and Chaco Canyon and fall semester courses. The first three BA’s and two MA’s were conferred in 1931-32, the first PhD in 1948. By the time of its 2003-04 Diamond Jubilee marking seventy-five years of Anthropology at UNM, the Department had awarded 234 doctorates in addition to numerous MA, MS, BA, and BS degrees.
The first academic anthropology programs in the United States were offered at the University of Pennsylvania (1886), Harvard (1887), Clark University (1889), which conferred the first doctorate in 1892, and the University of Chicago (1892). In the West and Southwest, programs at the University of California Berkeley (1901), the University of Arizona (1915), and the University of Utah (1926) preceded UNM’s, which initially concentrated on Southwest archaeology and ethnology.
The University of New Mexico was founded in 1889, twenty-three years before the territory became the forty-seventh state in 1912. Its seventh president, James F. Zimmerman, for whom the library is named, set up the Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences in 1928. The first faculty member and Head was Southwest archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett, first director of the School of American Research (1907), the Museum of New Mexico (1909), and the San Diego Museum of Man (1916), who had taught the territory’s first anthropology courses in 1900 while president of New Mexico Normal School (now Highlands University) in Las Vegas. Hewett and Zimmerman launched successful efforts to acquire important archaeological sites for UNM, including the Salinas missions, Coronado Monument, and Chaco Canyon.
Annual summer field schools begun by Hewett in 1928 have continued since at various Southwest and other sites. In summer 2008 there was an archaeology field school at the Valles Caldera National Preserve in the Jemez Mountains, the Hawai’i Archaeological Research Project NSF-Research Experience for Undergraduates Field School, and the UNM/Uxbenká Archaeological Project Field School in southern Belize. The Chaco Canyon Field School begun in 2004 is regularly offered. Renovations on UNM’s field training facility at the James Young Ranch near Cochiti Lake were completed in 2007. Today the Department maintains active, ongoing international research sites in Spain, Bolivia, Belize, Uganda and Peru.
The Department’s Museum of Anthropology became Albuquerque’s first public museum in 1932. When the Administration-Laboratory Building (now Scholes Hall) opened in 1936, the department occupied the east wing, the museum the first floor center. The first museum professional was hired in 1962, when a museum annex was opened. Additional museum space and a patio wing of faculty offices were finished in 1972 and the museum renamed Maxwell Museum of Anthropology in honor of philanthropists Dorothy and Gilbert Maxwell; it was accredited by the American Association of Museums the following year.
The Anthropology Annex was remodeled in 1982 for faculty and the Office of Contract Archeology, founded in 1973 as a semi-autonomous unit of the Department and now a research division of the Museum. In 2002 the Hibben Center for Arachaeological Research, with collections, curation and classroom space, opened thanks to a major donation from archaeologist and long-time UNM faculty member Frank C. Hibben. The National Park Service’s Chaco Culture National Historical Park Museum Collection Facility opened in the Hibben Center on October 12, 2007.
In December 1999 the Department and the Museum received a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to establish and endow the Alfonso Ortiz Center for Intercultural Studies, named in honor of Professor Ortiz, a faculty member from 1974 until his death in 1997. Sponsored programs bring together community scholars and cultural specialists with their academic counterparts for mutual teaching, learning, interaction and performance.
By 1945, when Leslie Spier founded the Southwestern Journal of Anthropology (renamed Journal of Anthropological Research in 1973), there were six faculty members teaching anthropology. The first doctorate was awarded in 1948 to John Adair for his study of returning war veterans at Zuni Pueblo. The Department entered a period of expansion and diversification after 1961, when it moved to its present quarters in the old student union building. By 1972 the faculty had grown from six to twenty-three and courses were diversified, including a long-term commitment to Latin American studies.
Four Anthropology subfields (Archaeology, Biological Anthropology, Ethnology, Linguistic Anthropology) were formed in 1975, with Human Evolutionary Ecology added in 1992. Ethnology and Linguistic Anthropology merged in 1996. During the 1980s graduate study became more theoretical in focus, while the undergraduate program was reorganized around a core curriculum. The 1990s brought increased attention to biological and forensic anthropology, cultural resource management, collaborative research, policy, and public anthropology. In 2007 the Biological Anthropology and Human Evolutionary Ecology programs merged to form an Evolutionary Anthropology program. There are now three subfields: Archaeology, Ethnology and Evolutionary Anthropology.
Since its establishment in 1928 the Anthropology Department has enjoyed an excellent national and international reputation. Numbered among its past and present faculty are eight members of the National Academy of Sciences (Lewis Binford, Jane Buikstra, Linda Cordell, Eugene Hammel, Henry Harpending, Clyde Kluckhohn, Jeremy Sabloff, Leslie Spier, Erik Trinkaus), two MacArthur Foundation fellows (Steven Feld, Alfonso Ortiz), eight UNM distinguished professors (Keith Basso, Binford, Buikstra, Patricia Crown, Feld, Louise Lamphere, James Spuhler, Lawrence G. Straus), one UNM presidential professor (Philip Bock), four University Regents professors (Basso, Lamphere, Trinkaus, Marta Weigle), five UNM Annual Research Lecturers (Binford, Buikstra, Lamphere, Stanley Newman, Spier), three University Regents lecturers (Carole Nagengast, Beverly Singer, W. H. Wills), and former presidents of the American Anthropological Association (Buikstra, Kluckhohn, Lamphere, Spier), the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (Buikstra, Spuhler), the American Ethnological Society (Basso, Lamphere), and the Society for American Archaeology (Sabloff).
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Maxwell Museum |
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Human Nature |
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To support the Anthropology Newsletter, the department has designed the bag and mug pictured above. The 12 oz mug, in black and red, is very attractive and the shopping bag, made of 100% recyclable materials, is machine washable (do not put in dryer) and has been manufactured to reduce our use of plastic bags from the grocery store. You may receive either item for a donation of the following amount: Mug $15.00, Bag $12.50 (prices include shipping within US) |
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